Half Way There

Product Information

The band, made up of James Bourne, Charlie Simpson and Matt Willis, have been working on their upcoming album for the last year and had one simple goal in mind – to make the ultimate Busted album! Again, Radio probably does the most right here, with a stable, breathing guitar reminiscent of Green Day’s ballads where Charlie Simpson’s more brash, unpolished vocals are allowed to project some greater emotionality, something that would benefit this album a lot more if that was a more regular occurrence, rather than James Bourne and Matt Willis desperately trying to replicate the nasal goofiness of turn-of-the-millennium pop-punk that, in all honesty, hasn’t aged the most gracefully.

or strips away any deeper conversation surrounding climate change or the state of the world on Race To Mars.

The ‘ Year 3000’-esque ‘ Shipwrecked in Atlantis’ delivers another fantastical flight of fancy, while ‘ Race to Mars’ takes a look at the space race in a tribute to Elon Musk and Tesla, and once again taps into the band’s penchant for a pop culture reference or two in its lyrics. A sentiment touched upon when Simpson, Bourne and Willis wail “ We’re not old / But we’re not as young as we used to be / Half way to obscurity” in the acoustic love letter, All My Friends, to their fanbase that touches upon the band’s belief that this is where they’re meant to be. At least more standard love songs like MIA and Radio are a bit more palatable by sheer virtue of being lower stakes by design, but even then, there’s a juvinility to them that feels awkward, and when tracks like All My Friends and It Happens make it a point to iterate how Busted aren’t going anywhere and how much success they’re currently having, that unfortunately feels like the intention.

Initially, their reunion was embraced with open arms, but then Busted released a new album… and then another.

The album's title is a reference to a lyric in Busted's 2003 single " Year 3000": " Everybody bought our seventh album / It had outsold Michael Jackson". Back in 2003, they went a whole album campaign as the only ones in the UK charts playing guitars and writing their own songs, and dressing like cool skate dudes from Venice Beach. This alongside Radio serves as the highlights of the album for me, the perfect ode to a band of where they came from, who they were and who they are now.

Today, they also announce two extra shows on 24 th March at Newcastle’s o2 Academy and 25 th March in Southampton at O2 Guildhall. The trio are back with their hyperactive blend of pop-punk for the first time since dropping their multi-platinum album ‘A Present For Everyone’ in 2003. Gone are the electronic influences and synth beats of Night Driver, and in their place the band has given us the guitars, the drums, and the pop-punk sheen that original fans fell in love with – albeit, all mixed in with the more mature lyrics of a group in their thirties and a heavy dose of nostalgia for good measure.With 9 tracks out of 10 having been jointly written by all three members of the band – James Bourne, Matt Willis and Charlie Simpson – Half Way There feels like a real labour of love, combining personal lyrics and the sound the band is known for into an easy-listening album that reflects on Busted’s history, their present and their future – and if listeners find themselves singing along to choruses too, then so much the better.

Please explain how All The Right Reasons by Nickelback (which was certified Diamond in the US and sold 10,000,000 copies) is a good album.

This is our first official single off the record, the other stuff was kind of given out to [the] fan base to kind of entice them, but this is the first 'big boy' single, so enjoy it. It’s judgemental, poorly written and hard to pinpoint a moral or overarching topic beyond lines about where friends are in their lives and how they’re fat now and how the reminisce about bar fights and have faith that they’ll (I’m unsure if they is just the band or the band and their friends) be fine despite being old and drifting towards obscurity. The highlight is the acoustic All My Friends, a song that veers into folk territory and laments growing up. All my friends’ is another weird one, both optimistic but sneering and doesn’t reflect really well on any of the singers. The started the campaign for the new album by playing three chaotic sold-out shows in a day at the 100 Club, and then dropped a throwback video for ‘Nineties’which revived the days of Top of the Pops, Blind Date, Nirvana and white-suited boy bands.